1. Field
This disclosure is generally related to object interests. More specifically, this disclosure is related to expressing an interest with state information based on network names.
2. Related Art
In many computing applications, it is often important for devices in a network to express interests for their respective collections of data. The proliferation of digital content creates a vast number of collections, which require reconciliation. Content-Centric Network (CCN) architectures have been designed to facilitate accessing such digital content. These networks include entities, or nodes, such as network clients, forwarders (e.g., routers and switches), and content producers, which communicate with each other by sending “interest” packets for various content items and receiving “response” packets comprising content objects in return. Unlike a traditional Internet Protocol (IP) network, where an object is tied to its location and its IP address, the content objects in a CCN are identified based on a specific name, which is location independent.
For example, a border router that is connected to multiple areas of a computer network can subscribe to namespaces for those areas (e.g., “Area 1” and “Area 2”). Other routers that are not border routers may only subscribe to a single area. This way, a router that subscribes to the namespace “Area 1” only obtains network-configuration items for Area 1, and a router that subscribes to the namespace “Area 2” only obtains network-configuration items for Area 2. The border router that subscribes to both namespaces can obtain network-configuration items for Area 1 and Area 2.
Because a network-configuration item's structured name is unique and persistent, a node in a CCN can generate a hash value for each network-configuration item based on the structured name, without having to process the data for each content item. The node can also generate an additive hash for each routing-data collection, based on the hashes for the individual network-configuration items of a routing-data collection, so that the additive hash represents the contents of the routing-data collection. For example, the node can generate the additive hash by using an addition operation (or some other mathematical function) to process the hashes for the individual network-configuration items of the routing-data collection.
In a CCN, a node requests an object using an interest based on the persistent name of the object. A node requesting the object can be referred to as a consumer. Any producer node of the object sends back the object using a response. Some content can be associated with states of the consumer, which can be referred to as consumer states. For example, accessing a video file content object can require consumer states comprising a username and password. Hence, an interest for the video file should incorporate the consumer states. Though CCN brings many desirable features to a network, some issues remain unsolved for providing consumer states with interests for associated content objects.